The combat systems has small inexpensive ships which move too fast to be hit by large ships. This means that a frigate may take on tasks in a larger fight like electronic warfare, tackling (slows down the enemy movement so they can be hit better), scouting, stealth torpedo bombing, blockade running, etc...
You could build a disposable destroy, which can be a very high damage ship and engage in combat that way. You'd have a very low chance of surviving a particular fight, but you can go out guns blazing as part of a team.
Or you go solo with a small fast ship, tackle a big ship and slowly whittle it down while it can't hit you due to speed.
Maybe you just start mining in deep space or haul goods between a couple points while you chill.
It really is a sandbox game -- the end goal is what you make it to be. I played several years and the big scale politics was more background noise of the game and may as well been NPC's and backstory.
The point being, you can get in there and either solo or grouped begin immediately carving out your niche.
There is no ultimate class. If you want to fly a titan (monstrously large ship), it will not only take years of training your character and insane amounts of in game money/resources, you need fleet support. A lone capital ship without support is a target, not something which rampages through the game on it's own.
In the end it probably comes down to more player skill at a few tasks and good decision making for what to scout/where to go. It will be more about the player getting smarter about the game than training the character itself. You train the character to help accomplish what you want to do as a player. Switching between different tasks can range from a week or two up to months/years to max something out. But a character is typically perfectly capable far quicker than the player is.
You could build a disposable destroy, which can be a very high damage ship and engage in combat that way. You'd have a very low chance of surviving a particular fight, but you can go out guns blazing as part of a team.
Or you go solo with a small fast ship, tackle a big ship and slowly whittle it down while it can't hit you due to speed.
Maybe you just start mining in deep space or haul goods between a couple points while you chill.
It really is a sandbox game -- the end goal is what you make it to be. I played several years and the big scale politics was more background noise of the game and may as well been NPC's and backstory.
The point being, you can get in there and either solo or grouped begin immediately carving out your niche.
There is no ultimate class. If you want to fly a titan (monstrously large ship), it will not only take years of training your character and insane amounts of in game money/resources, you need fleet support. A lone capital ship without support is a target, not something which rampages through the game on it's own.
In the end it probably comes down to more player skill at a few tasks and good decision making for what to scout/where to go. It will be more about the player getting smarter about the game than training the character itself. You train the character to help accomplish what you want to do as a player. Switching between different tasks can range from a week or two up to months/years to max something out. But a character is typically perfectly capable far quicker than the player is.